SD appeal for submissions on future of England Team

Mon Dec 23 2013

It's coming up to Christmas and the New Year break, but Supporters' Direct have one more thing that they want you to help them with.

Earlier this year, The FA Chairman Greg Dyke launched his commission into the future of the England Team.
Take me straight to the submission page

It's based on the idea that we need to start to focus our player talent development on not simply producing players for top clubs, but on providing better players for the national team.
That is a very important aim, we agree, but any solutions need to be considered carefully & sensitively, as the results will affect other parts of our footballing structure.
There is one particular proposal particularly that has reared its head and is being made by a number of high-profile figures in the game that we want to kill stone dead now: so-called 'Feeder Clubs'.
This needs removing from the table, as it is against the system of football in England, and against our values as organisations and as a movement. We're submitting our evidence to the Commission on this and other relevant issues - how about you? Remember that this Inquiry also takes place with the one year anniversary of the follow-up report by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee Inquiry into Football Governance looming - with a response from the football authoritries still sorely lacking.
It's only two days until Christmas, but you can submit until the 2nd of January 2014.
Why don't you let Greg Dyke and his Commission know your views?
Here are our own. Feel free to use them in your own submission:
  • In order to ensure that the needs of English football and the creation of more talent to play for our national side are met, the answer will not come from further entrenching a lop-sided system that is already in place and clearly not working to these wider objectives.
  • Attempts to introduce ideas such as feeder clubs (and the related impact on the core principles of promotion and relegation) serve the interests of a small group of elite clubs who are either unwilling or unable better to share the proceeds resulting from the popularity of English club football amongst the wider game, in order better to serve the national interests of a competitive England team.
  • The concept of Feeder Clubs or B-teams competing in the English pyramid will face significant opposition from supporters of lower league clubs and should be shelved immediately.
  • It will also fatally undermine up a system of football that remains the envy of the World, and will destabilise a system based on merit and hard work.
  • However, most importantly, feeder clubs would fundamentally undermine part of what makes football clubs so important, and that is their relevance to the local community. Football clubs do not exist as factories to produce playing talent. They are symbols of identity and pride for local communities and millions of fans. This sense of identity and belonging would be at once stripped away if the concept of feeder clubs were allowed to gain traction.

We think that these views will be held by most of those in the game, but we don't want to take any chances.
Don't forget that you can submit until the 2nd of January 2014 - but you can submit your views to the Commission now.
Although the prospect of this change might seem distant, just a statement of the intention to further explore an issue like this could be a dangerous first step in completely the wrong direction and threaten the future of our national game.
If you would like some help preparing your submission, just drop supporters' direct an email
Thanks for your support this year.
Have a Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Supporters Direct